Springsteen and SpongeBob lead Broadway's fall season

On Broadway over the next few months, you can catch a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, a pair of big-name comedians, a "Downton Abbey" star and an appearance by Squidward in human form. Here's a look at some of the highlights of the first half of the 2017-18 Broadway season:

LOOK UP

Amy Schumer and Steve Martin will team up for laughs — one onstage and the other off it. The actress will star in Martin's four-person comedy "Meteor Shower," about two couples who get together to observe the celestial event that inspires the title. (Opens Nov. 29 at the Booth Theatre.)

LAUGH & CRY

Amy Schumer isn't the only comedian on Broadway this fall: Emmy winner John Leguizamo stars in his original one-man comedic play "Latin History for Morons," about the forgotten history of Latinos in the Americas. (Opens Nov. 15 at Studio 54 theater.)

BRUUUUUCE!

The Boss — Bruce Springsteen — plays a solo show in which he performs songs from his career, interspersed with readings of his best-selling memoir "Born to Run." (Opens Oct. 12 at the Walter Kerr Theatre.)

SEDUCTION SURPRISE

Clive Owen stars in a revival of David Henry Hwang's "M. Butterfly," a re-creation of a spy scandal and love affair involving a French diplomat and a Chinese opera singer who turns out to be a man. It won the 1988 Tony Award for best play. (Opens Oct. 26 at the Court Theatre.)

WALL STREET SKEWERED

Playwright Ayad Akhtar, who won the Pulitzer Prize for "Disgraced," turns his attention to 1980s-era finance in "Junk," starring Steven Pasquale. It's both a modern-day morality tale and a road map to the way we live today. (Opens Nov. 2 at the Vivian Beaumont Theater.)

VISIT BIKINI BOTTOM

The idea of a stage musical of "SpongeBob SquarePants" with real actors sounds as odd to be a Broadway show as the original Nickelodeon series. It's got original songs by Steven Tyler, Sara Bareilles, John Legend, Lady Antebellum, Cyndi Lauper and David Bowie. (Opens Dec. 4 at The Palace Theatre.)

THANK THE GODS

Tony Award winner Lea Salonga leads a revival of "Once on This Island," a musical the follows the romance that grows between a young woman and a man from the wealthy side of the island on which she lives, guided by the island's gods. (Opens Dec. 3 at the Circle in the Square Theatre.)

GREAT WRONG TURN

"The Band's Visit," a musical based on a 2007 Israeli film comedy, was one of the off-Broadway highlights last year and makes the jump to Broadway with original stars Tony Shalhoub and Katrina Lenk, and a thrilling score by David Yazbek. It centers on an Egyptian orchestra that shows up to perform at the wrong Israeli town. (Opens Nov. 9 at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre.)

POLITICAL INTRIGUE

Uma Thurman makes her Broadway debut in "The Parisian Woman," which began life as a boulevard farce in the 19th century. Beau Willimon, who developed the Netflix series "House of Cards," has updated the story about an avaricious political wife to contemporary Washington, D.C. — but kept the original play's name. (Opens Nov. 30 at the Hudson Theatre.)

FLEETING TIME

"Downton Abbey" star Elizabeth McGovern returns to post World War I Britain in a revival of "Time and the Conways," a play about a well-to-do upper-middle-class family that toys with the idea of time. (Opens Oct. 10 at the American Airlines Theatre.)

A STAR IN CANDLELIGHT

Mark Rylance returns to Broadway in "Farinelli and the King," the 2015 play in which he starred at Shakespeare's Globe in London. Lit by candlelight, the play with music centers on a castrato who gives up his career to sing privately for a Spanish king. (Opens Dec. 17 at the Belasco Theatre.)

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Mark Kennedy is on Twitter at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits

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